At first, Kelsey Plum’s comments stung Jonquel Jones.
It was the immediate aftermath of the Liberty’s WNBA Finals loss to the Aces in October, and Plum told reporters inside Barclays Center that, as much as the Liberty were “a team, they’re not a team.”
They contained strong individual players, but they “don’t care about each other,” she said, with the crux of her point — which Plum later said was taken out of context — being that there’s no way to microwave a superteam.
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That hurt because the emotions were fresh, Jones said.
The Liberty’s quest for the franchise’s first title collapsed in Game 4.
Plum’s comments followed.
And in an exit interview with reporters, Jones called her answer “classless,” blasting the Aces star for choosing to “essentially s–t on someone else” instead of celebrating their second straight title.
Eight months later, reflecting on what went wrong in that series ahead of the first Liberty-Aces showdown of 2024 on Saturday at Michelob ULTRA Arena, Jones told The Post that “there was some validity” to what Plum said.
The Liberty didn’t possess the same cohesion that has ignited their 11-2 start — one win shy of matching their franchise-best — in 2024.
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The heartbreak of crushed title dreams hasn’t worn off, and that’s something that, at least for Jones, might never truly subside.
But the gap in connectivity — and, at its most basic root, time together on the same court — that served as the Aces’ strength and the Liberty’s shortcoming last year has slowly faded as one of the WNBA’s budding rivalries renews.
“[Plum] definitely gave a different perspective,” Jones said Wednesday, “and I saw it. I saw what she saw when I went back and I watched the game, and it kind of felt like we were all trying to do it separately just trying to get one win versus coming together as a team and trying to get a win.”
Through 13 games in 2024, the Liberty have benefited from returning the same starting lineup and assembled a bench that continues to carve out roles.
They’ve operated — and won — the past three games without starting point guard Courtney Vandersloot.
“We’re not perfect,” Jones said, “but I feel like we’re definitely leaps and bounds ahead of what we were last year.”
Still, the Aces loom as the ultimate measuring stick.
They snapped their first three-game losing streak since 2019 on Thursday, and nearly all of their title-winning roster remains intact.
A’ja Wilson has emerged as an early MVP candidate.
And even if the Liberty can contain Wilson, secondary scoring options such as Plum and Jackie Young lurk.
To assistant coach Olaf Lange, it became obvious in the Finals that the Liberty didn’t execute the defensive rotations required to match the Aces’ plethora of threats.
The depth — and star-filled construction — of those rosters helped form one of the WNBA’s budding rivalries to begin with.
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The Liberty and Aces faced each other four times in August and four more times two months later, and both earned statement wins.
The Liberty took the Commissioner’s Cup by 19 points.
The Aces reached the pinnacle of the sport for a second consecutive season.
They collectively helped set ratings records and epitomized the growth of the league — before a rookie class of Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink and others arrived and continued to rewrite the standard for television viewership.
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Rivalries, in general, are great for the WNBA, Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said.
But the parity popping up — the Mystics, 0-12 at the time, led the Liberty in the fourth quarter Sunday — doesn’t dilute the Liberty-Aces matchups, Jones said, as both can coexist and will benefit the league, even if Brondello and Stewart insisted the Liberty won’t approach this game differently despite what unfolded last year.
The Aces were the team that prevented the Liberty from scripting a storybook ending to a year where they assembled a collection of stars and tried to figure everything out on the fly.
They were the defense that made the one final stop in the fourth quarter of Game 4 — the Vandersloot miss that provided the backdrop for Plum’s comments that soon became national headlines — and caused Stewart to have lingering regret for the jumper she didn’t take.
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“This year’s different,” Stewart said Wednesday. “It’s a new year. You gotta turn the page from what happened last year.”
But that all shaped the aura of the Liberty and the Aces and the 40-minute windows where they shared the same court. And Saturday, the next chapter begins.
